


choking on candle smoke

by supinetothestars



Category: Daredevil (Comics), Daredevil (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Anxiety, Coping Mechanisms, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-02
Updated: 2020-05-02
Packaged: 2021-03-02 09:27:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23969092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/supinetothestars/pseuds/supinetothestars
Summary: The week has been a whirlwind, passing so quickly that Matt feels overwhelmed by the hurricane of activity. He’s struggling to find his footing on the strange new terrain that is return to civilian life. Normalcy is no longer his normal, and reestablishing it as such seems like an insurmountable summit. Moving back into his apartment, setting up the newly minted Nelson, Murdock and Page, apologizing to old friends, putting tabs on old enemies - Matt does it all. He conquers that burden. His were the shoulders that carried the weight of Wilson Fisk’s gradual downfall to the very end of the line.And yet - for some reason, the prospect of attending a party - of mingling, drinking, smiling, presenting to the world the newly coined revival of Matt Murdock, risen like Lazarus from the grave - is causing Matt feel something very akin to terror.
Relationships: Matt Murdock & Franklin "Foggy" Nelson
Comments: 7
Kudos: 54





	choking on candle smoke

They celebrate Karen’s birthday the first weekend after Fisk is taken down. 

It’s the first proper birthday party Matt’s been invited to attend in a long time. Ten people are invited, and it’s hard to find even that many; the hellscape that was Fisk’s downfall did an excellent job of sifting out the good friends from the shallow ones. Most of Karen’s old acquaintances ran like she was hellfire during her campaign against fisk.

The week has been a whirlwind, passing so quickly that Matt feels overwhelmed by the hurricane of activity. He’s struggling to find his footing on the strange new terrain that is return to civilian life. Normalcy is no longer his normal, and reestablishing it as such seems like an insurmountable summit. Moving back into his apartment, setting up the newly minted _Nelson, Murdock and Page_ , apologizing to old friends, putting tabs on old enemies - Matt does it all. He conquers that burden. His were the shoulders that carried the weight of Wilson Fisk’s gradual downfall to the very end of the line.

And yet - for some reason, the prospect of attending this party - of mingling, drinking, smiling, presenting to the world the newly coined revival of Matt Murdock, risen like Lazarus from the grave - is causing Matt feel something very akin to terror.

There’s a buzzing in the back of his skull. It’s been building all week. It was a small, faint hum at first, so faint he barely noticed it, gradually growing louder and louder as the end of the week approached. Matt doesn’t mind. The noise makes it hard to hear his own thoughts, and his own thoughts are things that could very often do without hearing. But as Matt approaches Karen’s door, carrying a bouquet of flowers in one hand and his cane in the other, the muffled sounds of people milling around in preparation for the upcoming event grows faint in comparison to the mounting hum ringing against his ears. It feels as though there’s a cloud of insects hovering about his head. 

He raises his fist and knocks.

Karen lets him in. Foggy’s there with Marci, and so is Brett, and some women Matt doesn’t recognize. They each shake his hand and introduce themselves, and their names are washed from his consciousness as quickly as they were placed there. Matt smiles, pays his due diligence in small talk, and moves on. 

There’s a cake. Some small presents - candles, flowers. There are drinks on the counter. Everybody sings before they cut the cake. Matt knows it’s the first time in a long time any of them have attended an honest-to-god birthday party for someone their age, but he also knows this isn’t about the _birthday_ , not really. This is about having survived Fisk and come out the other end intact. This display of cheeriness is Karen’s way of trying to counteract the constant stifling terror that had been her life for that few weeks of eternity. Matt can’t begrudge her that, not really. He wants her to be happy. But everyone is smiling as they speak, and he can hear the way their lips are pulled up in the edges of their words and in the ringing in their voices, and the smoke of the birthday candles must be getting to his head because the air is starting to feel thin and the buzzing is growing louder. 

Louder.

Louder. 

He ends up in a conversation with three women he doesn’t know and Brett Mahoney. Brett’s telling a story, something about the police force; everyone is thoroughly enthralled. Matt can’t hear over the roaring in his ears; can’t focus on the words of Brett’s story over the ear-ringingly loud sound of laughter. He listens to the women’s reactions and follows along. Laughs when they laugh. Smiles and nods. Brett turns to him and says some words that Matt can’t for the life of him understand, and the candle smoke is there stifling his breathing again, and his chest is tight, and he smiles again and nods along with Brett and then excuses himself from the conversation.

Karen’s alone by the counter, pouring herself a drink. He tells her he got a text from an old friend. Says he’ll be right back. He can hear a smile in her responds, as she pats him on the shoulder and says to be back soon. He smiles back. It makes his face hurt, all this smiling.

  
  


Matt’s grown fairly good at finding the roof access doors of buildings he doesn’t live in. It’s one of the skills that come with knowing that wherever he is, there’s a solid chance he’ll need to escape from a rampaging gunman, or else dive onto a fire escape before the building blows to hell, or lead a killer-for-hire away from the rest of the building’s occupants, or confront a herd of ninjas head-on because every other corner of the city has been infested with enemies like maggots leeching across an old and rotting carcass. This skill has saved his life before and, as Matt steps out of the roof access door and breaths the first breath he’s taken in hours that isn’t tainted by the persistent smell of mildew and old carpets, it feels as though his life has been saved once again. 

The roof is scattered with old plants and some raggedy lawn chairs. The railing is old and rickety, and when Matt puts his hand on it it shivers under his palms as if chilled by the wind. He tilts his head back and takes a deep breath that smells like old rusting iron and concrete and the basil plant perched on the other side of the roof, and just like that, the buzzing starts to fade away, replaced by a distant hum of traffic and pedestrians and the constant droning activity of the people in the building below his feet. If he focuses, he can feel ground humming below his feet. He focuses on that for a few long moments that stretch into several long minutes.

The rooftop access door creaks open. For a half of a second, Matt’s head charts out every possible escape route, each potential weapon, where the nearest fire escape sits against the brick walls of the building, which potted plant would do the most damage to the skull of an armed gunman. And then the scent of Foggy’s cologne drifts across the rooftop, and the adrenaline drains away.

Foggy joins Matt by the railing. He leans on it and looks over, head tilted as he watches cars pass on the street below. Matt wants to tell him to be careful leaning on battered old steel like that; wants to remind him that one slip, and the metal could give way, and the fall would cause more destruction than anything else Matt can possibly imagine. Instead Matt shifts his weight and tilts his head back into the wind.

“Figured I’d find you up here,” Foggy says. There's no smile audible in his voice. Matt’s never been more grateful. “Took me ages to find the door, but here we are.”

Matt just nods, angling his chin towards the distant horizon. He thinks the sun might be setting onto the skyline, and the quiet ticking of Foggy’s watch tells him he’s right. 

Foggy watches him silently for a long moment before speaking. “You want to talk about anything, Matt?”

Matt is quiet. Matt doesn’t know what to say. He has no words that could possibly explain. He tries to think of something to tell Foggy. Something about the buzzing that has deafened his thoughts all week. Something about how he’s tried to cope with things the same ways as Karen, by pretending that normalcy has returned until one is no longer pretending, but it’s not working, and his face hurts from the smiling and laughing. That this new life without a common enemy is so strange to him he cannot navigate the terrain. He is a soldier returned from the war to find that his head will find its own terrors, if the world does not supply. In this moment, Matt should tell Foggy the truth; that he feels as though he’s drowning, as though the world has shifted so drastically under his feet that he no longer is sure how to survive, that he doesn’t know if he can ever return to the kind of simple content in his own survival that Karen seems to have been able to find. He’s lost that sense of content for good, Matt thinks. He lost it with Urich and Nadeem and Father Lantom and Stick. He doesn’t know if he even ever had it.

Matt can’t say all this, can’t find the words, can’t find the air with which to draw his next breath. Foggy, watching him, is silent. He wraps his arm around Matt’s shoulders and pulls him close. 

And for that moment, it’s enough. 

  
  
  



End file.
